


A Friend for a Friend

by thehaikubandit



Series: Memento Mori (Friendship is Keay) [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Not all of Jon's "friends" are going to respond well, also gerry being sad over michael time, but especially some of the more uh... eldritch ones, sorry - Freeform, this one's a bit sad, well most of them aren't...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23259703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehaikubandit/pseuds/thehaikubandit
Summary: Helen decides to pay this intruder in Jon's body a visit. If she scares him a little, well, that just means she's succeeded...
Series: Memento Mori (Friendship is Keay) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647388
Comments: 22
Kudos: 168





	A Friend for a Friend

Gerry was scrolling through a news article on Jon’s laptop when it suddenly glitched, the colours shifting and the font sizes jumping from huge to tiny and back again, before the entire thing flipped upside down. He looked up. There was a yellow door in the corner of Jon’s office. A familiar door. It opened.

“You must be Helen,” said Gerry. “I’ve been told to expect you.”

“You must be the thing that isn’t Jon.”

He didn’t reply to that. It wasn’t like she was wrong. She moved across the room in a jerky motion that made him feel like he was watching a stop motion film. When she was right in front of him, she stopped, looking down at his face.

“They warned me about you,” she said.

Her wide smile had no hint of joy in it. She bent down until her too wide mouth was next to his ear.

“I’m their insurance policy if you go wrong,” she whispered.

As she straightened back up, she lifted one of her hands to his face, tracing his jaw with a too sharp, too hard, thumb. Gerry stood his ground, just looking at her. He had to count on the fact that she couldn’t risk harming Jon, at least, not yet. The light sting of a papercut followed the path of her thumb. Swallowing deeply, he shoved down the rising nausea that came with looking at her.

“Good,” said Gerry. “I’m glad they’ve got one.”

Helen tilted her head at that, considering him. Her neck bent just a little too far as she did so.

“Do you _want_ them to kill you?”

“I don’t intend to hurt anyone, least of all Jon, but it’s smart to plan for the worst. And I’ve been in here for a while. I know you care about him.”

“Do I?”

“I think you do.”

She hummed pensively. It set his teeth on edge and he had a feeling that there were noises in the humming that he couldn’t hear.

“Goodbye, little-not-Jon,” she said, turning and walking towards her door.

“Wait,” said Gerry. And oh, he shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t push his luck and he shouldn’t drag up grief that was best left far in the past. But he’d never been good at stopping himself from talking. Even when he wanted to.

Helen paused, and turned her head to face him. She didn’t move the rest of her body, just rotated it 180 degrees, one elongated hand frozen on the door handle.

“I, you were Michael once, yeah?”

“I was. I didn’t like being Michael. He was _wrong_.”

“I’m sorry. For what Gertrude did to you. For what she did to him.”

She turned fully now and walked back towards him, once more staring at his face.

“Why?”

“I knew him. He was my friend. He was kind.”

“Was he? I don’t remember that. He liked to play. _I_ liked to play. When he was me. Would you call that kind?”

“No. I guess he changed.”

“And he made me change. He made me a thing. I don’t like _being_.”

“Aren’t you being now?”

“Helen is better than Michael was. She came by herself.”

“That’s fair. Anyway, I just… wanted to say sorry.”

“Hmmm.”

She laughed and he could feel his nose begin to bleed.

“I took your friend and now you’ve taken mine. What does that make us little-not-Jon?”

“I don’t know, but I’m trying to give Jon back.”

She leaned in to whisper in his ear again.

“I can’t give back Michael.”

She paused next to his ear for just long enough that he noticed she wasn’t breathing. When she pulled back, he saw she’d stopped smiling.

“I know.”

“ _Goodbye_ little-not-Jon.”

This time he was silent as she walked towards her door. When it closed and vanished, he felt his ears pop, as though there’d been a sudden pressure shift. Gerry rested his face in Jon’s hands and sighed. He hoped that Jon would wake up soon. He hoped that Jon would wake up at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Look I know that I promised it was a happy series and it will be we SWEAR! There's just gonna be some uh... teething problems. See you all in a week. We can be found as always on friendship-is-keay on tumblr. Come say hello!
> 
> Updated because Space fixed my tiny grammar mistakes and they're an editing genius!


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